The Shwa abjad gait IS cursive, and I hope it can be made calligraphic, by
which I mean "resembling pretty handwriting". Yes, I hope that all Shwa
gaits will be beautiful
It is also an abjad gait in that the vowels are written separately from the
skeleton of the consonants. Arabic and Hebrew with vowels shown is still an
abjad, right?
Despite my protestations to the contrary on behalf of foreigners, I don't
plan on having the Shwa Police descend on you if you omit the vowels in
languages where they can be inferred. For me, the more important point is
that it is the consonants of Semitic languages that bear most of the
meaning, and the Shwa Abjad gait keeps them recognizable.
On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 12:26 PM, R A Brown <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> On 27/07/2011 13:35, Peter Cyrus wrote:
>
>> Arabic : I agree, and apologize for it on the page for
>> Arabic. I also mention that the abjad gait is based on
>> Islamic art - the weaving of geometric forms - not the
>> script.
>>
>
> So you do - but not on the Gaits page. I have read 'The
> Abjad Gait' section again. It seems to me that this 'gait'
> is no such thing. It's a _cursive gait_.
>
> I use cursive script for writing English if I'm doing it by
> hand and not using a keyboard. So I would expect there to
> a cursive form of Schwa.
>
> It is not a requirement of an abjad to be either cursive or
> calligraphic. Most (all?) scripts can have calligraphic
> forms.
>
> Nor is it true to say that "a piece of Abjad text should be
> beautiful." Any script, including our Roman script, should
> look beautiful in a calligraphic form.
>
> The characteristic of an abjad is that only the consonants
> are expressed - OK, both Arabic & Hebrew now use certain
> signs as 'matres lectionis' to give some indication of long
> vowels - but basically it's a consonant script.
>
> Hebrew, as I've noted above, is written with an abjad; but
> it's not written in the Arabic abjad, but the Hebrew one which, when
> printed, ain't cursive (tho there are cursive forms for hand writing).
>
> Schwa hasn't got an abjad gait:
> {quote}
> since unlike the Arabic and Hebrew scripts, the Shwa Abjad doesn't omit
> vowels: the vowels must be written.
> {/quote}
>
> It ain't an abjad, period! It's a cursive gait only.
>
> I'm afraid my view of the Schwa gaits is similar to that
> expressed by Michael Everson a day or so ago.
>
>
> Phoneme: I discuss this on the Principles page.
>>
>
> Yes, as far as I understand on the Principles page:
> - consonants are written phonemically;
> - vowels are written phonetically.
>
>
> Yes, Shwa (in my use of it) is not completely phonemic.
>> The idea is that foreigners won't know the phonology, and
>> so need some help with the phonetics. I haven't yet come
>> up with a rock-solid principle governing that, but my
>> rule of thumb has been to write those transformations
>> that a typical non-linguist speaker can hear in his own
>> language. IMHO, the use of the dark LL at the end of
>> English syllables falls into that category, while the
>> aspiration of initial unvoiced plosives doesn't.
>>
>
> Not in my experience. Trying to teach schoolkids the
> difference between English _help_ and German _Help_ is not
> easy. "What's the difference?" is the more common reaction.
>
> This certainly conflicts the Principles, hence my confusion.
>
>
> Another principle was to show all such changes in vowels,
>> since Shwa has a lot of vowel letters (12) but in fact
>> only half the vowels of the IPA. But the application of
>> that principle has also been difficult.
>>
>> Perhaps no such principle is tenable, and Shwa should be
>> completely phonemic.
>>
>
> That will work only in those languages which are easily
> analyzable by the phonemic theory. Mandarin Chinese has
> quite a few problems in this regard. As for English, the
> often recurring and seemingly endless YAEPT (Yet another
> English pronunciation thread) on this list shows only too
> well how difficult it is to reach agreement on the phonemic
> inventory of global English.
>
> The most important points is surely _practicality_.
>
>
> --
> Ray
> ==============================**====
> http://www.carolandray.plus.**com <http://www.carolandray.plus.com>
> ==============================**====
> Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
> There's none too old to learn.
> [WELSH PROVERB]
>